Bears giftwrap Christmas Present to Cowboys

Right now it is 35-7 Bears and there are 5 minutes left in the game. Blocked kicks, interception returns, good running, etc.

The Cowboys are smiling as they now have homefield advantage throughout the playoffs. The Bears would have swept the Packers for 2 of their 6 wins.

Good show Bears! But where was this the rest of the season?

2007 Chrifsmas Eve Eve

Workout notes I took yesterday off and did a SLOW outside trudge in the frozen tundra today. I managed just over 5 miles in an hour.

Yesterday, the temperature was in the low 50’s (F,10 C), but then dropped to freezing by midnight and then much lower than that, and we got about 2-3 inches of the white stuff to cover all of that water that froze on the street!

So the run was in 15 F with 20 mile an hour wind (gusts to 35 mph), yet I really needed to get outside. I am one of those who needs the discipline of getting up and then getting out there; I just feel better the rest of the day when I do that.

Teaching
I love the blog “Rate Your Students“.

A couple of posts that I can relate to all too well:

Entitlement This is the old: “your class is the only one I’ve ever gotten bad grades in”. Note: often this claim is a bold faced lie.

A laundry list of stupid student tricks. enjoy! (note: most students aren’t like this at all; most of them are a joy to teach. But there are always a few….)

Religion
I am not making this up: some on the nutty religious right actually claim that I-35 is some sort of “holy road”! (I-35 is a highway that runs from South Texas up through to Northern Minnessota; it goes though San Antonio, Austin, Dallas/Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.

God knows as well that I’m never further from sainthood then when I’m driving in traffic. Loving prayer is not my first response to the guy tailgating me, or the guy doing 50 in the left lane, or the SUV-drivers who don’t use turn signals when changing lanes. So the idea of treating an Interstate as something holy — a place where, in Laubach’s words, I am “as wide open to people and their need as I am toward God” — seems to me like it could be a Good Thing.

But this is something else entirely: “Christians Movement Calls I-35 a ‘Highway of Holiness.’” (Thanks to Andrew B. for the tip.):

People drive on it every day, sometimes cursing along the way, but thousands of people consider Interstate 35 to be a holy road.

The highway that stretches from Laredo to Duluth, Minn., has grabbed the attention of Christians across the country, including those in Austin. Members of Christian groups along the I-35 corridor said the highway was mentioned in the Bible, and in order to fulfill a prophecy, it needs a little saving first.

According to Light the Highway, the worldwide movement is driving thousands to prayer on the interstate. Christians said the Old Testament’s book of Isaiah prophesizes I-35 will be the United States’ “Highway of Holiness.”

[...]
Reading on, it doesn’t seem like Lujan and his Light the Highway effort are a terribly whimsical or playful bunch. Isaiah 35 is a joyous expression of millennial hope** but, like our friends LaHaye and Jenkins, these folks don’t seem interested in such promises of future restoration and healing. They’re all about the judgment and the purifying fire. They seem to like Isaiah 35:8 only because of its condemnation of “wicked fools” and “the unclean,” by which they don’t mean the invading armies of Babylon but — what else? — the gay menace:

Lujan conducted a five-week 24-hour prayer vigil and organized what he called a “purity siege” along Austin’s famed Sixth Street. The sieges are part of the I-35 project, a nationwide movement to save those at bars, gay clubs and abortion clinics in cities along the interstate.

Frankly, when I’ve been on I-35, I’ve thought it was divine punishment for some wrong I’ve committed in a previous lifetime.

Hat tip to Mike’s Blog Roundup at Crooks and Liars.

Some Images:

Hat tip to Troutfishing at the Daily Kos.

Upon seeing this photo, I am reminded of the following quote:

but religion makes intelligent people say and do wacky things, believe and affirm crazy things [...]my challenge is this: “Can you name me a good action done or a good thing done by a believer that couldn’t have been said or done by a non-believer?” I’ve offered this challenge now in print hundreds of times, and on the air, and on the Web, and in public, debating with quite senior religious people. None of them have come up with an example. Whereas, if I say in front of any audience you can think of, “Can you think of a wicked thing said or an evil thing done by someone because of their religious faith?” Nobody needs you to get to the end of the sentence, they’ve already thought of an example.

(Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great)

Another good one:

Hat tip to God is For Suckers, who points us to this interesting essay:

[...]There are demented fuckwits running for the office of president in the most militarily powerful nation in the world. They think they can have conversations with an all-powerful cosmic being who instructs them in the right things to do, and that they have the approval of that being, no matter what they do: they can initiate an unjust and futile war that kills and maims our soldiers and slaughters the civilians of another country; they can endorse torture; they can deprive people of their civil rights; they can treat loving couples as pariahs if they don’t meet their abstract notions of who is allowed to fall in love; they can poison the planet; they can oppress the poor; they can enrich their corrupt cronies; they can pretty much run roughshod over any notion of justice, liberty, and equality. And what does their imaginary god do? He gives them a phantasmal thumbs-up and an ethereal “Good job!” and assures them that he is on their side. That’s all he can do, since all he is is a projection of a mob of venal bluenoses’ sense of entitlement. [...]

Happy Holidays!

I’d like to wish all readers, visitors and trolls a HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON.

I’ll offer you a few holiday cards; pick the one that you like.

Saturday Night Loser Post

Just some random posts; the wife is recovering from foot surgery (doing ok too) and I am watching the BYU-UCLA Las Vegas Bowl game. It is 3-3 in the second quarter; lots of good action.

UCLA fumbled a punt; BYU now has a good chance to score as it is first and 10 at the 14. Yes, they did; pass to the corner of the end zone and they are up 10-3.

A long UCLA field goal, then a BYU touchdown pass puts BYU up 17-6.

But BYU fumbled inside its own 10 with 13 seconds left, and UCLA has one time out left. BYU should have taken a knee.

Touchdown, UCLA on the last play of the half; with the point it is now 17-13 at the half.

Who are the Haters?

From wiscmass at the Daily Kos

Now, to be clear, I have nothing against the Salvation Army. They do a lot of good work and I have a great deal of respect for them. But there are two reasons why I am unlikely to donate anything to them. First, I’m Jewish, and if I’m going to donate anything to a religious organization, I’m more likely to donate to a Jewish group. And second, and really more relevant for this story, I never carry a lot of money with me.

In fact, today, I was carrying no money. No cash, no spare change, nothing. These days, I wouldn’t expect that to be so uncommon — I had a credit card with me, and that’s really all I needed to make my necessary purchases, just as millions of other people do every day. So I made my purchases, went to leave the store, and was confronted by the bell ringer.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, gesturing toward the pot.

“Happy holidays,” I replied, thinking nothing of it. No big deal, right?

Think again.

“Oh, you’re one of those people,” the man sneered at me.

I probably should have kept on walking. I probably should have just let it go. I probably should have just wished the man a pleasant evening, despite his rudeness, and left. But I didn’t do that.

“One of what people?” I asked, trying to keep my rising anger out of my tone of voice.

“You know who I’m talking about. Look around you, pal. You live in a Christian country and we celebrate Christmas here! If you don’t like it, you can get the hell out.”

I know better than to argue with such people. [....]

I took my purchases to my car, put them in the trunk, and returned the store, glaring at the bellringer as I past him and he muttered obscenities at me under his breath. I went straight to the customer service desk and asked to speak with a manager, to whom I promptly gave my account of the incident.

The manager, to his credit, apologized profusely and acknowledged that no one should be subjected to such abuse. But it’s also not entirely the store’s fault — after all, they don’t provide the bell ringers; that’s the Salvation Army’s job. He could ask the bellringer to leave, but there wasn’t much more he could do.

As I left the store a second time, I had to walk past the disgraceful bell ringer again.

“Some day, we’re going to get rid of all you Christian haters! Merry Christmas, terrorist sympathizer!”

So why do I tell you this story?

Well, for starters, note that this happened in Madison, Wisconsin, a bastion of liberalism. If it happened to me here, it can happen to anyone anywhere!

Teaching: I sometimes feel this way. This comes from the blog “rateyourstudents”.

It is about a professor that sells out to “the system”.

I’ve done it to myself, turned myself into a fearful and timid professor, tying up my whole self-worth in what others think of me: students, colleagues, and administrators.

All I wanted to be since the time I was a middle schooler was a teacher. I loved college and grad school was a blast. Then I was in the profession, and every bit of my courage and soul got stripped away.

I kissed ass and catered to my department to move along the tenure & promotion track. I dumbed down my classes to get student approval. I wrote incomprehensible gibberish in “hot fields” in order to publish things I wouldn’t read myself if you put a gun to my head. [...]

Ok, the last part wasn’t true; I haven’t published anything that I didn’t find interesting. My research problems were all “fun” for me; I look forward to getting to do this on break. But much of the rest of this is true for me.

Theism/Atheism
A nice explanation of how I feel and think:

If god’s existence can not be proven, it is hence reasonable to reject it as an outlandish and ridiculous claim. This leads to what we now call Agnostic Atheism. That is, I reject the notion of god’s existence due to its lack of proof and so I’m a philosophical agnostic and a practical atheist. Perfectly reasonable and rational.

A lot of theists commonly mistake atheism to mean “belief in the non-existence of god”, which is as stupid as the theist’s blind belief of god’s existence. Atheism simply means “I do not believe your claim of god’s existence”, not “I believe in the non-existence of god” because the latter is a negative claim!

In the Name of the Towelie directs us here and posts a video.

Politics Interestingly enough, I got this off of a pro-Clinton blog which was supposed to be slamming Obama for some of his “present” votes. Actually, the article is very fair to Obama.

The record has become an issue on the presidential campaign trail, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, has seized on the present votes he cast on a series of anti-abortion bills to portray Mr. Obama as a “talker” rather than a “doer.”

Although a present vote is not unusual in Illinois, Mr. Obama’s use of it is being raised as he tries to distinguish himself as a leader who will take on the tough issues, even if it means telling people the “hard truths” they do not want to hear.

Mr. Obama’s aides and some allies dispute the characterization that a present vote is tantamount to ducking an issue. They said Mr. Obama cast 4,000 votes in the Illinois Senate and used the present vote (130 times) to protest bills that he believed had been drafted unconstitutionally or as part of a broader legislative strategy. [...]

An examination of Illinois records shows at least 36 times when Mr. Obama was either the only state senator to vote present or was part of a group of six or fewer to vote that way.

In more than 50 votes, he seemed to be acting in concert with other Democrats as part of a strategy.

For a juvenile-justice bill, lobbyists and fellow lawmakers say, a political calculus could have been behind Mr. Obama’s present vote. On other measures like the anti-abortion bills, which Republicans proposed, Mr. Obama voted present to help more vulnerable Democrats under pressure to cast “no” votes.

In other cases, Mr. Obama’s present votes stood out among widespread support as he tried to use them to register legal and other objections to parts of the bills.

In Illinois, political experts say voting present is a relatively common way for lawmakers to express disapproval of a measure. It can at times help avoid running the risks of voting no, they add. [...]

In at least 45 instances, Mr. Obama voted with large numbers of fellow Democrats as part of the tactical skirmishing with Republicans over the budget.

Seven other times, he voted that way as part of a broad strategy devised by abortion rights advocates to counter anti-abortion bills.

Pam Sutherland, president of Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, said Mr. Obama was one of the senators with a strong stand for abortion rights whom the organization approached about using the strategy. Ms. Sutherland said the Republicans were trying to force Democrats from conservative districts to register politically controversial no votes.

Ms. Sutherland said Mr. Obama had initially resisted the strategy because he wanted to vote against the anti-abortion measures.

“He said, ‘I’m opposed to this,’” she recalled.

But the organization argued that a present vote would be difficult for Republicans to use in campaign literature against Democrats from moderate and conservative districts who favored abortion rights. [...]